Saturday, July 25, 2015

Elk Island field trip at Botany 2015


I just returned from this year's annual Botany conference, which was held in Edmonton, Canada. As always, I arrived early to go on the fern field trip. This year's trip was particularly special, as it was led by Dr. Don Farrar of Iowa State University, the world expert on the fern genus Botrychium and its relatives (lots of movement and renaming of species in this group have led to many former Botrychium species having been moved to other genera in the last few years). It was a wonderful field trip and we saw quite a few species, including those pictured below.

The whole group focused on a fern finding
Botrychium matricariifolium
Botrychium pallidum
Botrychium simplex
Sceptridium multifidum
Beautiful token angiosperm: Phleum pratense